Originally Posted by
MSPeconomist
Sounds basically right, but I still suspect that the corporate contract is offering special whatever-UP fares that book into V class inventory rather than A or P as the publicly available whatever-UP fares seem to do.
Yep, it's possible, but I'm too lazy to dig deeper to figure out what's going on, which would be a very time consuming undertaking. It's kind of like sausage making: I don't care too much about everything that goes into it but do enjoy the final product.
It would be less likely, from what I understand, that the corporate travel site is showing V to eligible elites when booking within their window would give the automatic free upgrade instantly.
I know for a fact that this isn't the case here as the same fares and choices are showing up even if the traveler has no status or the website/agent isn't aware that the traveler has airline status because his/her data isn't in the system.